Fatherhood, Part Five {That ’70s Show}
Title: Fatherhood
Chapter Title: 1989/1990
Words: 1,603
Fandom: That ‘70’s Show
Coupling: Jackie/Hyde
Rating: T/PG-13
Author’s Note: For some reason, writing the group is really difficult for me so it took me a while to get this chapter out. Let me know your thoughts. They’re sustaining me through the horror that is calculus.
Five hours to go before the beginning of the next decade, and Steven Hyde did not expect to spend the last day of this decade working at Grooves. A decade ago, Hyde would have been just like his two employees – showing up at work with a hangover from celebrating the last day of 1989. But all of Jackie’s doctor appointments and the baby crap she just has to buy are getting expensive and Hyde’s hand is being forced. Hard to do inventory when your employees can’t even count to ten so he has to become less of a “cool” boss and create a rule of no drinking or smoking before noon.
The new rule is putting his employees on edge. It’s putting him on edge too.
No surprise that he walked into the basement with a glare fixed on his face. The slam of the basement door interrupts the debate Forman, Donna, Kelso, and Fez were having about whatever is on television. They all watch silently as Hyde walks across the room and glares at the man currently occupying his chair.
“Kelso,” Steven growls. “Move!”
“It’s a free country,” Kelso replies smugly and wiggles his body in a display of him marking his territory. His smug grin is wiped off his face, however, when Hyde’s fist connects with his shoulder.
“Ow!” Kelso cries out as he falls off the chair and onto the floor. “Hyde, what the hell, man?”
Without a word, he sits down on his chair and folds his arms across his chest. Kelso stalks off the freezer and grabs a popsicle with a huff.
“Alright, red!” He says excitedly, and Hyde just shakes his head in response. The slam of the door reverberates around the room and although nobody noticed the door opening in the first place, the slammer certainly has the group’s attention now.
He watches his wife from behind his sunglasses with amusement. She’s so angry that he’s surprised smoke isn’t coming out of her ears.
“Isn’t anybody going to ask me what’s wrong?” She demands of the group. They all look at one another to see who wants to actually ask this loaded question.
“She’s your best friend,” Eric whispers to his wife from his place on the couch in the parents’ basement next to her.
“She’s his wife,” Donna replies pointing to the guy occupying the chair next to her. Hyde doesn’t dare jump on that grenade.
“Oh, whatever,” Jackie snaps tired of waiting for someone to ask her. She stomps over to the edge of couch and glares at everyone in the room.
“Your baby,” Jackie huffs gesturing to her rounded belly, “won’t cooperate.”
Furrowed eyebrows are her only response from the group as a whole, but Hyde cracks a smirk.
“Definitely my kid, man.”
“Steven!” She replies unhappily. “How are we supposed to plan the baby’s room when she won’t prove that she’s a girl?”
“Or that “she’s” a boy,” Eric interjects earning a glare from the pregnant woman next to him. “And there’s the She-Devil we all know and love.”
“Shut up,” Jackie snaps at him before turning her attention back to Hyde.
“Steven,” she whines as she walks in front of the couch to stand in front of him. Her belly comes right at his eye level but he doesn’t crane his neck in order to look up at her and misses her pout. “Make her cooperate.”
There are snorts from around the room at her demand.
“Jackie,” Donna interjects. “Like Hyde said, that’s his kid and when has Hyde ever cooperated?”
“I got him to marry me, didn’t I?”
“You just about had to pull him down the aisle,” Donna reminds her.
“Oh, whatever,” Jackie snaps as she sinks down into Hyde’s lap. In the past, his hand would rest on her ass or just below her hip bone (his thumb lightly stroking the bone) but now his hand rests on her side at the start of her belly.
“Aw,” Eric starts but glares from both Jackie and Hyde and his mother shouting down the basement stairs that dinner’s ready interrupts his taunting.
With the hands on the clock getting closer to midnight, the Foremans’ party is still going on upstairs but the topic of conversation has shifted to heartburn and stretch marks and cribs. Red slipped out to the garage over an hour ago, and the conversation exiled Hyde and friends back down to the basement. He’s sitting in a circle with Kelso, Fez, and Forman. There’s no haze in the room due to the sleeping child next to Eric on the couch, but each one of them is clutching a beer.
“End of an era, man,” Hyde says before taking a chug of beer.
“Yeah,” Eric replies before cracking a wide grin. “Who’d have thought you and Kelso would be married? I mean, it’s you and Kelso.”
“You lucky sons of bitches,” Fez mumbles with a shake of his head.
“Married? Man, that’s nothing,” Kelso replies. “I’ve got a baby!”
“I’m not a baby!” Ten-year-old Betsy shouts from her place on the floor next to her father’s lawn chair. The toys her father bought her for Christmas and hauled up from Chicago for her to play with are spread out in front of him. Stacked next to her are the library books her mom helped her checked out for their trip up to Point Place, and with a dramatic huff she goes back to reading about the adventures of Jo Marsh.
“Betsy,” her father says, “don’t you wanna play with these awesome toys?”
He picks one up to offer it to her but gets distracted and starts playing with the toy himself.
“Those toys are for babies,” she replies haughtily before sticking her nose back into her book.
“Burn!” Eric shouts but cringes when his son begins to stir. Luckily, Luke just rolls over and continues to sleep. His relief is evident and a quick glance around the room shows him just how thankful everyone is that Luke kept sleeping. Donna’s wrath knew no bounds the last time Eric woke the kid up.
“Hyde’s gonna have a baby!” Kelso reminds the group although his tone makes it seem like that fact just dawned on him. “And Jackie’s the new Jugs A Poppin’!”
“Betsy,” Hyde says to his goddaughter. Without looking up from her book, Betsy fogs her father in the arm.
“Ow! Hyde, I told you not to teach her that!”
“Whatever,” Hyde mumbles back before taking another drink of beer.
“Jackie’s more than Jugs A Poppin’,” Fez tells the whole group. “She’s like a goddess of pregnancy. Her round belly and those luscious breas– “
Without a word from her godfather, Betsy leans over and socks her father’s foreign friend in the leg.
“Hyde!” Fez cries out.
“Quit talking about Jackie,” Hyde instructs.
“She was mine, too,” Fez reminds her.
“Yeah,” Eric interjects. “For ten days.”
“Ten glorious days,” Fez affirms. “Ai, I wish I could have ten more days with my goddess now. Her lusciousness is givin’ me need.”
This time it’s Hyde who fogs the foreign man in the arm.
“Quit gettin’ needs about my chick, man,” Hyde snaps.
“Oh, Steven,” a feminine voice blubbers and the four men turn to see Jackie standing at the bottom of the stairs leading to the kitchen. Clustering around her are Donna and Brooke.
“Crap,” Hyde mumbles at the sight of tears rolling down her face. Not even twenty weeks pregnant and Jackie’s been even more of a hormonal mess than usual, which sucks considering her tears are like his kryptonite. She’s back sitting in his lap before he can blink; her arms wrapped around his neck. She blubbering into his ear about him calling her his chick and how she knows that means he loves her.
And then she’s kissing him, pressing her rounded belly into him, and he can barely make out Fez whining about them giving him needs.
“No making out in the circle,” everyone including Betsy yells at them, chucking empty beer cans are the couple.
The couple barely breaks apart when they hear Kitty’s voice over the rest of the party upstairs starting the countdown. Their friends hurry up the stairs to rejoin the party; Donna picking up a still sleeping Luke because Eric’s not strong enough to lift the two-year-old. Jackie makes no move to stand up and instead moves to rest her head on her husband’s shoulder.
“Six!” The party upstairs carries out the countdown.
“Let’s stay here,” Jackie says softly moving one arm from around his neck to rest her hand on her small belly. Hyde doesn’t respond to her wish verbally, just remains sitting in his chair.
“Five!”
“Steven?”
“Four!”
“Are you excited about 1990? We’ll have a baby; we’ll be parents.”
“Three!”
“No worse than bowling,” he tells her because he doesn’t hate bowling and he doesn’t hate the idea of becoming a dad. She furrows her eyebrows in confusion (she’s never understood that response of his) and hesitates in her reply.
“Two!”
He sighs and places his hand on top of hers.
“You’re my chick,” he reminds her. “That’s my baby.”
“And,” she prompts.
“One!”
“Don’t make me say it,” he groans.
“Steven,” she warns.
“Happy New Year!” Their friends and family upstairs cry out. She turns her attention to glance over her shoulder back up the stairs to where everyone else is.
“I love you,” he tells her softly. She whips her head back around so quickly that he’s pretty sure she’s going to get whiplash with the biggest grin on her face. “Happy New Year, doll.”
